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What surprises you about the Google Home Hub when you first lay your hands on it is how small and unobtrusive it seems.

It’s basically a 7-inch tablet (only a bit bigger than some of the current phones on the market) with a stand and a speaker built in. It’s smaller than Amazon’s rival Echo Show device and cheaper too. The Google Home Hub costs £139 compared to the £219 Echo Show.

There’s no camera on the front and, like with other speakers, there’s a button on the back for toggling off the built-in microphone. You can navigate through the gadget with the touchscreen but obviously it’s built to work with the voice-controlled Google Assistant.

Google shows off the Home Hub at its launch event (Image EPA/JOHN G. MABANGLO)

There are a few different colours to choose from (Image: EPA/JOHN G. MABANGLO)

It comes in a choice of three colours: chalk, charcoal, aqua and sand.

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Why would you even have a ‘smart display’ in your house anyway? Well, Google says there are two reasons. For starters, it provides you with visuals to enhance the information. Rather than just finding out the footy scores, it could show you the winning goal.

The second part of it as you might expect from the ‘Hub’ part of its name, is to serve as a focal point for other devices in your house. If you use a Nest video doorbell, for example, the Google Home Hub can hook up to it and display a live video feed from your front porch whenever anyone hits the bell. Alternatively, you could have it turn on the lights.

It can also be attached to other Google Home speakers for multi-room audio. And while it doesn’t compete with Sonos on sound quality, it does for affordability. The Hub is controlled through the Google Home app on your phone and you can set up unique shortcuts that Google calls ‘Routines’. For example, say ‘good morning’ and you can have it fire up with a news bulletin and the best route to work.

Why do these things always want to help you with the cooking? (Image: Google)

Like the current Google Home devices, it can recognise multiple users. So if you and your significant other have separate Google accounts with calendars, it’ll know to put your events on yours rather than theirs.

I am slowly getting into the habit of using a virtual assistant more often. The two far-field microphones were very good at picking up my voice, even from across the room. By and large, Google would respond to my average questions like ‘will it rain tomorrow’ or commands like ‘play some rock music’ without any trouble.

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I also love the fact that you can access YouTube directly with the Google Home Hub. In fact, Google is throwing in a free 6-month subscription to YouTube Premium with each Google Home Hub – something that would normally cost £72. Just beware the small print that says you can’t currently have, or have previously had, a subscription or free trial of any YouTube or Google Play Music service. And you have to redeem the offer by January 31, 2019.

It will work with thermostats, lights and other Google Home speakers (Image: Google)

But invariably (at least in my house) the Google Home Hub would spend most of its time as a glorified digital picture frame or night clock. Google seems to understand this as it’s got an ambient light sensor that dims the display depending on the amount of available light.

You can select certain photos from Google Photos that you want it to show, or you can leave it to just pick them at random. Only the decent photos get shown, though. Google’s imaging software will filter out blurry or dark photos, ditto for ones of you in your bathing costume that you might not want flashing up in the living room.

The Google Home Hub is the next generation of its Assistant-powered smart devices (Image: Google)

My feelings on whether or not you should buy one are pretty easy to surmise. If you’ve already bought into the ecosystem then it’s a sensible, and not too expensive, purchase. If, however, you’ve gone down the Amazon Echo route, you should leave this alone.

If you’re looking to get your first smart speaker, then I’d recommend investing in a Google Home Mini or Amazon Echo Dot first and seeing how much usefulness they actually bring to your life before opting for a display.